Dr. Steve said that based on what I have shared with him about her behavior and how she bit me three days ago, he is bound by the law to send her into the Oregon Health Department so they can test for rabies! I know she doesn’t have rabies, she has demons- not sure which is worse.

He said he knows the cost is prohibitively expensive but then he paid me a back-handed compliment and said “Mary Anne, I really like you and what you do for cats. If I just euthanize her and not follow-through with the testing and she does have rabies, you die. I have to live with that and I don’t think I can! In fact, I know that I couldn’t.”

So- Marlow has been put to sleep and no I wasn’t there because just the sight of me sends her spinning out of control. They will then send in her body to be tested and I will know by Friday. Not a bill I wanted and again I KNOW she doesn’t have rabies, but I understand their stance on this. I had one cat when I was growing up that had rabies and I remember it like it was yesterday. He was a huge, fluffy black cat who hunted gophers in the back field near our home. He came home one day foaming at the mouth and snapping at the air. My father turned the hose on him and while he was shrieking and shying away from the water, my dad caught him in a net and put him in a box and took him around the corner. I remember the gunshot and then nothing.

Rabies is rare in this part of Oregon so not only do I have to come up with the cost of this test now, but I am not allowed to have Marlow after she is gone and give her a decent resting place.

I told her I was so sorry about all of this but her aggression is escalating and I had to weigh all the pros and cons of keeping her here on earth- and for who’s glory would I do that? So I could eventually say proudly that I was able to socialize these demons at rest, or do I look at that whole picture and understand she was like a loaded gun with a defective trigger and just let her have peace.

It was a hard choice and it is going to be an expensive way of finding my own peace- but again, I don’t think she has rabies.

If you would spread the word via your blog or social media or at the grocery store it will make a difference!

She is microchipped- she is missing and being missed and her name is Cross. She has a crooked tail. If you could spread the news around through social media, perhaps this woman will get her cats back- we can hope. This kitty came all the way from China and it would be so nice if she came home safe. She was taken out of Reedsport Oregon-

I wish there were some way they could make an APP that would alert people to lost kitties. Sort of like the Amber Alert, but since cats still don’t count in so many facets of society, I doubt my dream would ever be realized- but wouldn’t it be nice?

I am so glad I insist on pre adoption and post adoption home visits. This last home, the lady was trying to sway me from coming to their home (it was quite far away) and opt instead for a closer location (her mom’s house0. But, as I told her, I want to see the home where the cat might be living so it didn’t matter that she was a bit far away.

When I got there, even before I walked up to the door, something didn’t feel right. For the first time, I left Google in the carrier in the car with Mike and went alone into the apartment.

Ay- yi-yi- the apartment was a mess in so many ways. There was a pug, and two cats already living in the one bedroom along with two adults and two teenagers! The cats were not friendly at all, there was no space for active kitties to even run around and I was appalled that they would even consider bringing another living, breathing creature into their family.

I was nice about it, but I do hate disappointing people but if they can’t even bring themselves to straighten up one room- what type of care would they give to this special needs kitty? Plus they were slovenly in appearance and just overall odd. It was strange and I left quickly.

There is a home for Google out there- I just haven’t found it yet-

I received a gift pack from Merrick Foods of their new food Purrfect Bistro along with some coupons and on a whim, I took the canned food into the kitten room and opened it up. The kittens loved it! They are eating it now instead of the baby food- the food is all natural, no grain. They seem to like the Beef Wellington best but they also took quickly to the dry food.

I asked the local feed store to order this food and found out it is currently out of stock! I have a pending order for it once it becomes available again.

The kittens now have the run of the bedroom. I very cleverly barricaded them in half of the room using our jungle-gym fencing but hey, they are growing which means they are climbing and they were up and over the tallest barricade in a matter of seconds. I threw in the towel and just gave them the whole room. I figured they would dive under the bed and I wouldn’t even be able to see them- but I was wrong. They are all over me when I walk in the room- jumping on the back of my legs and climbing up to “see” me, making me grateful I wear jeans and not shorts!

Here is a current photo of the little ones- they are growing like weeds

more photos

The second time, we braced the cage door closed- went to the store and came home with the kennel in pieces and Brooke chewing on the sofa leg! LOL

The third time, we cable-tied the cage door closed on another larger cage and went out for a few minutes returning to find steel carnage and Brooke eating our carpet!

We figured after that and three purchases of cages, we just best keep her with us.

We kept all the pieces and so a few days ago, I asked Mike to millerize a new cage for the kittens and here is the result. They love it- they have lots to climb up and on and room to run around and the other cats can’t get to them.

ON THE CONTEST NOTE- I did not place 3rd so I did not win- BUT I so appreciate all of you who took time out to vote for my cats. Maybe next time!

“How odd-” I said ( I talk to myself a lot lately)

With some trepidation, I went over the object and knelt down. I carefully uncovered the shroud of napkins to discover, my 6 year old barn cat Lincoln beneath! He had been hit on the road last night and whoever hit him either knows he belongs to me, or I don’t know what? There was no way he made it to the middle of our yard after he was hit- so someone placed him there.

In a town where I have seen people purposefully swerve over 3 lanes of traffic to hit baby ducks, this napkined goodbye touched my soul. Did a teenage girl hit him and see that he came from our property or?

I buried him under the apple tree where he liked to sleep and told him I was so sorry he never got along well with the others.

Because there will be competition in the room, I struggled to come up with an innovative way of capturing cat lovers’ attention from the other rescue groups.

I decided after praying about it that I was going to make a foam board of photos and the caption is “If These Cats Could Tweet…”

I did not wish to give the graphic details of these cats and their plights so instead, I did a play on words. For India, the black kitten who was intentionally poisoned by his previous owner- I wrote: “Get me an interview with Jeff Probst! I am a True Survivor.”

For Trump- my older golden kitty, I tweeted “What? You think with the name of Trump that I am NOT neutered?”

For my little golden boy Dixon- I tweeted “What am I a canary? I don’t Tweet!”

and so on and so forth for all the kitties up for adoption.

I will be taking two of the bottle babies with me, a friend will be staying behind and bottle feeding the rest while I am gone.

This is the first time I will participate in an event such as this and my girlfriend Angie has agreed to help me out. I just hope enough interested people will fill out the adoption forms and the home visits will go well and these cats can move on with their lives.

I heard from Amanda who adopted the two Siamese mixes; Sahara and Fawn and I loved her email. The sentence that made me grin was this one:

“Mary Anne, I am having so much fun with these two girls!”

Here is Google in all her glory out in the cat enclosure. She still has her issues with her tummy and unless I get the powder to put on her food, she has major litter pan issues. I am hoping she will go to a home where she is the only kitty and her diet can be strictly monitored. Not sure if I shared this or not- but it was finally determined that she has an intestinal disease that pigs usually get! In researching this further, near where she was found and the other littermates were lying lifeless in the grass is a filthy and I do mean filthy pig farm. I have been back a few times and I have seen little kittens wallowing in the mud with these pigs eating their food! Those kittens later vanished without a trace. I tried to get them away from the pig farmer- but he was less than pleasant to deal with so I gave up.